Nuvo Essentia

Make/Model	Device Version	Connection Type
Nuvo/Essentia	N/A	Serial

Description:

This driver controls the Nuvo Essentia multi-zone audio switcher/amplifier. This product supports twelve zones and six sources, so you can map any of the six input sources to any of the twelve output zones. Each zone's volume, power, mute, and selected source can be controlled separately via this driver.

Quirks and Limitations:

Currently this driver supports up to two Essentia Nuvos linked together.
Each zone is referenced by a two digit identifier of 01 to 12.

Connection Details

The parameters are 9,600 baud, 8 bits, one stop bit, no parity. That's fairly quick for the amount of data, but it doesn't provide asynchronous notifications of changes, so the driver has to poll the zones in sequence.
The connection is a standard straight through cable and a 3 wire should be fine.
The installation of the driver also requires the user to indicate the maximum number of zones to use. Set this number to your last zone number. Any zones in between will be recognized as inactive and the driver will skip them.

Driver Events

This driver also provides for User Action Events, detecting keypad button presses in all zones. Whenever a keypad button is pressed, a User Action event is generated with Event Type defined as “Button” and Event Data defined as SxZyyButton, where x is the Source that was selected at the keypad when the button was pressed, yy is the Zone where the button was pressed and Button is a string indicating the actual Button name. See the table for the available strings.

Driver Fields

This section lists the fields that the driver makes available, their types, minimum and maximum values, etc...
The ?? symbol in the fields represent the zone number, so there will be versions of that field with the zone numbers 01 through 12 (or the max zones indicated in the driver installation).
Name Type R/W Description/Limits
CPUVersion String R Read the Nuvo CPU Version
Command String W Write system wide commands.
Z??Mute Boolean R/W Read or Write the zone mute status, where ?? is a zone number from 01 to 20.
Z??Power Boolean R/W Read or write the zone power status, where ?? is a zone number from 01 to 20.
Z??Source Card R/W Read or write the zone source number, where ?? is a zone number from 1 to 20. The legal values are from 1 to 6, to select source 1 through 6 as the source assigned to this zone.
Z??Volume Integer R/W Read or write the zone volume level, where ?? is a zone number from 1 to 20 and the volume level is a value from 0 to 78, where 0 is loudest.
The commands supported by the Command field are:
ALLOFF
Turns off all zones off.
ALLMON
Mutes all zones.
ALLMOFF
Un Mutes all zones.

Name	Type	R/W	Description/Limits
CPUVersion	String	R	Read the Nuvo CPU Version
Command	String	W	Write system wide commands.
Z??Mute	Boolean	R/W	Read or Write the zone mute status, where ?? is a zone number from 01 to 20.
Z??Power	Boolean	R/W	Read or write the zone power status, where ?? is a zone number from 01 to 20.
Z??Source	Card	R/W	Read or write the zone source number, where ?? is a zone number from 1 to 20. The legal values are from 1 to 6, to select source 1 through 6 as the source assigned to this zone.
Z??Volume	Integer	R/W	Read or write the zone volume level, where ?? is a zone number from 1 to 20 and the volume level is a value from 0 to 78, where 0 is loudest.